Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Nostalgia and Ron Paul's core constituency

by shamanic

After EarthLink laid me off in September, I set about to transition into doing what I've always done on a volunteer basis for people: freelance writing, graphic design, and the like. I use several online freelance brokers to seek clients and bid for projects, and the other day I saw a posting for a book project on freedom and the constitution.

The person was seeking a ghostwriter, and as he or she described the project, I realized that it wasn't just Democrats who were marginalized and embittered in this decade. It was also that element of the extreme right wing that (metaphorically, ideologically) lives in the mountains of Idaho, home schooling their kids. People who love guns. People who believe there's a government agent behind every shrub on their property. The Black Helicopter crowd.

In the 90's (my late teens and early 20s), I was fascinated by these types, but I guess I thought they had either come in from the cold or -- somehow -- bought into the power dynamic. After all, America is abroad, kicking ass, so maybe they had some Faustian bargain to chill out as long as "the right people" were running the show into the ground.

And then along came Ron Paul. Clearly this group has *not* gone away. I love it! I became a Democrat in the aftermath of the 1994 election, but continued to have a lot of sympathy for those people who believe so stridently in small government that they're well armed in the event they should have to shrink it themselves.

That's Ron Paul's constituency. I really thought they had perished from this land. Welcome back, peeps. You're batshit crazy, totally obsessed, more important than ever (for sure), and I love you!